To a friction material manufacturer, temperature measurement is of extreme interest because the distribution of heat generated during braking is not well behaved. This heat is one of the most important factors in altering friction level and wear characteristics. There are several general classes of temperature measurement methods commonly used to test friction materials. There are also more sophisticated systems which sense infrared radiation and convert it to temperature. When used as the infrared equivalent of television, these systems are useful in measuring the surface temperature of stationary or slowly moving objects. When testing friction materials, the surfaces of interest are rapidly moving and often shaped so they cannot be viewed in total from a single location. When this surface cannot be "photographed" as such, the temperatures must first be encoded as a data stream and then decoded. There is no longer a "television" picture and the data are of sufficient density as to require a computer to collect and to use a finite element analysis type program after the conversion to temperature. Thermal maps can be made of the surface of interest using color graphics and, in addition, numerical methods such as histograms can also be used. This technique was developed by the end user because it was not commercially available and has been very valuable in determining several friction material characteristics.